Modernism and the Great Gatsby
To understand modern literature, one must develop a sense of the structured and ordered lifestyle prior to modern culture. Before the era of modernism, lifestyles were systematically organized through standard traditions. When World War I started, Americans felt the impact of modernism at its strongest with men going off to battle and women working in factories. Lifestyles were beginning to divert from family traditions. People started to abandon their traditional values and adapt to the challenges that were altering lifestyles and thus modernism surfaced. Modernism did not have one specific definition, but an array of definitions and interpretations. The modernist authors who were beginning to surface at this time did not adhere to any one specific interpretation of modernism. According to C. Hugh Holman modernism is A strong and conscious break with traditional forms and techniques of expression...Modern implies a historical discontinuity, a sense of alienation, of loss, and of despair. It not only rejects history, but also the society of whose fabrication history is a record. It rejects traditional values and assumptions, and it rejects equally the rhetoric by which they were communicated. It elevates the indiv
Because he rejects the traditional world he came from and is not accepted into the world he is attracted to, Gatsby finds himself alienated from both of these worlds. Aldridge, John, W. "The Writers of the Twenties." Readings on F. Scott Lockridge, Ernest. Introduction. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The The Great Gatsby is the ongoing search of the individualized vision of the American dream ultimately leading to the crash of the American dream. "The fatal crash of illusory values and the way in which this affects a group of characters of the first post-war generation" (Straumann 112). The story begins with an introduction to Nick Carraway, the narrator. He is portrayed as an honest, friendly young man that listens to everyone's problems and is "inclined to reserve all judgements" (5). Nick introduces the reader to the other main characters in the novel, his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan, as well as the namesake of The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby himself. Sutton, Brian. "Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Explicator 58 (2000): 103-106.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2077
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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